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THE last time Ben Cousins was in the public eye it was in a humiliating public arrest, Ned Kelly's words "such is life" emblazoned across his bare stomach.
Yesterday Kelly's aphorism was hidden beneath a crisp white shirt and, in place of the dazed look and black goggle sunglasses of October last, Cousins couldn't stop flashing the winning smile of a year 4 boy trying to impress the teacher.
Instead of such is life, the delisted AFL star, just back from a skiing holiday in Japan, told a packed media conference "life's good - I'm in a good place".
The shirt shone even brighter against the grimy backdrop of Redfern's Eveleigh Street, where Cousins - who will enter the ring on February 27 against an unnamed opponent - appeared on an anti-drug promotion with the boxer Anthony Mundine.
He answered only three questions but said enough to suggest his recovery, interrupted by a five-day cocaine binge in the US last year and a wild couple of nights at schoolies week on the Gold Coast, was still a work in progress.
"In terms of rehab, it's an ongoing process. You don't, I guess, get to a point where you're completely over it," said the former West Coast Eagles star, who is training and planning a return to football in 2009.
Cousins has promised a full explanation of his fall from grace. But for now he was only prepared to admit his drug problem. "I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say that I have a drugs problem, have had a drugs problem, because for a lot of people they don't choose to do it. It, in a lot of ways, chooses them," Cousins said.
Whether a slip of the tongue or a revealing switch of tenses, the effort to deflect responsibility for the downward spiral of his life and career was a recurring theme in Cousins's answers held at the Tony Mundine Gymnasium in the heart of Redfern. He was an "extremist" who had run the gauntlet.
"But at the same time I think there's a lack of public awareness for a majority of people who find themselves in my situation … deep down don't think I really had a choice … the very things that make me a great footballer are some of the things that lead me to fall into those sorts of traps."
Intriguingly, Mundine dedicated a quote from Malcolm X for Cousins. It said most adults fail in life because they're "so afraid, so cautious, so safe" - a seeming contradiction to the unshakeable self-belief of the uber-sportsman typified by Cousins's unceasing appetite for risk.
Mundine, upstaged for once in his public life, spoke earnestly of his friend. Appearing in public on an anti-drugs stage "shows the courage that he has, his manhood, that he wants to get better and will strive to get better and, eventually will be the man he wants to be", Mundine said.
"I think he will be one of the greatest role models because he's been to the depths of the darkness and now he's going to the sun, to the light."